Sorcery, Schemes and Skelt: The Kinowenn Chronicles Vol II

by Rachel Ronning

  Lucy wasn’t’ sure if he was trying to reassure them or himself. They were comfortable as a group and enjoyed each other’s company. There was much laughing and joking as they traveled. Lucy could tell Maya was worried, but other than that things were easy. They were neither doing anything secret nor trying to avoid detection so they stayed at inns when they were available and camped out when they weren’t.

  One morning, Lucy rode next to Taran.

  “Justin told me you finally learned our family secret,” he joked.

  “I would have preferred him telling me rather than being blind-sided, but I feel better knowing.”

  “I feel better having you know. How are you taking it?”

  “It doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you are asking,” shrugged Lucy.

  “Leaves you with a lot of questions, I bet,” guessed Taran.

  “Yes,” admitted Lucy. “Some of them are for you.”

  “Me?” Taran asked in surprise. What could he answer that Justin couldn’t?

  “Justin told me that he’d never been married, but you had. I asked him about your wives, but he told me that was your story to tell,” explained Lucy.

  “That does sound like Justin,” Taran glared at his brother.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” assured Lucy.

  “It’s okay, I don’t mind,” said Taran. “I don’t talk about them often. Sometimes, when I start, all sorts of things come back to me. Weird little tidbits that I didn’t remember I remembered. I don’t often know when to stop, and Justin tends to get fed up with me if I’m still telling a story three days later,” he laughed and so did Justin.

  “I’ll stop you if you get too long. I’d like to know though. They must have been an important part of your life,” said Lucy.

  “You’d be inclined to think that they were. Perhaps, emotionally speaking, you’re right. Even though we were together a short number of years comparatively speaking,” mused Taran. “Did Justin tell you anything?”

  “Only that their names were Nahli and Shea.”

  “Nahli and Shea. Yes, the two loves of my life.”

  Lucy could feel everyone moving a little closer to them and listening a little harder. Everyone was interested in what Taran had to say. They knew so little about him and were about to learn a lot. Taran didn’t seem to mind.

  “Nahli was my first wife. You know I learned to carve and craft furniture from my father,” Lucy nodded. “Her father ran the mill where we went to get wood. I found myself asking my father if I could be the one to go to the mill. He thought I was interested in picking out the wood. I was, but I was also interested in Nahli. How could I not be? She had long soft black hair and deep blue eyes. She seemed to dance when she moved and always had a smile for me. It took me a long time to build up the courage, but I asked her to go walking one day and she said yes. After that, things moved surprisingly quickly and we were married. The miller thought it a good match and so did my father.

  Quinn was less sure, but that was partly because Nahli didn’t know. No one in the village did. Quinn was at the school most of the time. Since Justin and I looked mostly human, she thought it safer for all of us to be considered human. When she was home, she changed her appearance to look human too. It never occurred to me to tell Nahli we were half Elven. I didn’t know it mattered. We knew we were half Elven, but we didn’t know it was a problem for some people. To us, it meant that we could do little bits of magic, though nothing as grand as Quinn or Eric. There were things I didn’t know and had never thought to ask.

  We were so happy together, so young. She had a smile that made you feel like you were the center of the world. I loved that smile. She made the best bread. I don’t know how she did it and I’ve never been able to duplicate it. The crust was that perfect light brown crispness but the inside was so soft it melted in your mouth. She loved baking bread and always smelled like it. Often, she had flour on her dress despite the apron she always wore with the little pink flowers on it. Flour on flowers. See it’s details like that that bother Justin,” Taran quipped. “The apron has no significance to the story as a whole, yet it brings a smile to my face. I can see her now, brushing her long black hair out of the way. Leaving traces of flour on her face every time she brushed her hair back behind her ear, while she kneaded dough. Considering how often she made bread, you’d think she’d remember to tie her hair back before starting, but she never did.”

  “So what went wrong?” asked Gavin.

  “Why do you assume something went wrong?” accused Maya. “Perhaps they lived together until she grew old and died. You only want to rush the story because his talking about bread is making you hungry.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “You’re right. Something very simple went wrong. I noticed that she was unhappy and asked her about it. She didn’t want to talk to me about it at first, but I finally learned she was upset because we had been married for four years and hadn’t had a baby yet. It hadn’t bothered her the first three years. Like I said, we were young and happy. She assumed a baby would come in time. She was worried something was wrong with her. I told her not to worry. These things take time. I talked to Quinn about it. I knew she knew about healing. She would know if something was wrong with Nahli.”

  “That’s when you found out,” said Lucy.

  “Yes, Quinn decided it was best to sit us down and explain a few things about being half Elven that hadn’t been necessary knowledge before. I wish I had known before marrying Nahli, but things happened so fast and there was never a good time for Quinn to tell us. I knew I might live longer than her, but our parents didn’t know how much longer. I thought that was something we could talk about later. It was hard telling Nahli. She was only slightly repulsed by the revelation that I was half Elven. She was absolutly furious about me being the reason we couldn’t have children. She said she had always wanted children and if she had known, she never would have married me.

  It was never the same after that. I told her we could adopt, but she wanted her own babies. Our babies. For some reason, that was very important to her. I wouldn’t have minded at all. To me it was the joy of raising a child with her. Sharing our love with a child. Teaching that child how to feel the wood and see what it could become, or watching Nahli teach them how to make her perfect bread. Tucking in a child at night and singing them to sleep. I didn’t have a longing for one like she did, but to me, any child was worth having and loving. It did not have to be ours. Nahli was never able to see it that way.

  She tried to be happy, for me, for us. The longing for something she couldn’t have grew and grew. I always wondered if she would have felt differently if it was her fault she couldn’t have children. Would she have gotten over it? I always felt like she resented me for taking something away from her. Her smiles seemed forced. I felt like everything I did was wrong and I didn’t know how to make it better. Leave her so she could find happiness with someone else and eventually have children? That didn’t seem right either. I don’t think I would have left her if our situations had been reversed. Why did it matter so much? It wasn’t like I had intentionally deceived her. I didn’t even know at the time. Why couldn’t I be enough?” Taran sighed.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to rant. I guess there is still a lot of love and a lot of pain with memories of Nahli. I don’t think about the end most of the time and the average person doesn’t ask. I don’t usually get angry because when I think of Nahli, I think of her baking bread, or sewing with delicate fingers and quick capable stitches. I remember her sweeping out the cabin. I think of her watching me while I worked and watching her nose crinkle up as she tried so hard not to sneeze from the saw dust. I remember her smile. The smile that said I was all that mattered. I try to focus on those memories most of the time.

  I’ll continue with the story. She started having pain in her chest, but didn’t tell anyone. By the time it was so bad that she couldn’t hide it, it was too bad to cure. She died in my arms o
n a warm, sunny afternoon. Her last words were ‘I wish we could have had a baby.’ It took me a long time to get over that.

  I took a break from woodworking. I went with Justin to the school. I learned what magic I could and learned to fight. I threw all my anger and frustration into weapons training. I reasoned that if I practiced hard enough, I would be too exhausted to think.”

  “That explains why you are so good with a staff,” commented Gavin.

  “Is that why you were worried about me?” Lucy asked Justin mind to mind.

  “Partly. I want you to have everything you want in life. If that includes kids, I want you to have those too.”

  “I’m not Nahli,” affirmed Lucy. She looked back at Justin, but he didn’t seem reassured.

  “What about Shea?” asked Lucy. Taran was looking sad. Lucy hoped talking about Shea would help, but she was dead too, so Lucy wasn’t sure.

  “Shea,” Taran smiled. “Shea could dance like no one I’d ever seen and no one I’ve seen since. If there was music playing it flowed through her, but I liked it best when she danced in silence. Even though there was nothing playing, you could almost hear some kind of music while watching her move. Shea was everything Nahli wasn’t. Shea was blond, strong, could fight as well as anyone I’d met, could sing as pretty as Maya, and couldn’t cook to save her life.” Taran laughed. “I got better at cooking because she was so terrible at it, with no desire to improve.

  I should probably back up the story. Justin and I did some traveling. If you do enough traveling in troubled lands, eventually you will run into the Ostrakan Army. It actually took us longer than most, but we did. Shea fought with them. She was half Elven too. She knew, she understood. She didn’t despise me for who I was and we both knew we could never have children. In fact, that never bothered her. She was a fighter, not a mother. We fell in love. Again, we married quickly. I think my family was happy for me, hoping this marriage would work out better than the last one.

  We traveled and fought for a while; things went well. Eventually, I missed woodworking. I missed my cabin. She was apprehensive about staying in one place and living a calm non-violent life, but she was willing to try it for me. I told her we could come back to the Ostrakan Army if she didn’t like living in a cabin being married to a woodworker.

  Again, things were good for a few years. Until I could tell she was getting restless. I offered to go back to fighting, but she could see that my real passion, when it came to a profession, was woodworking. Instead, she offered a compromise. She would fight as a mercenary for three months and then come home for three months. This suited us both fantastically. I could work hard when she was gone and focus entirely on her and our marriage when she was home. She could get fighting out of her system and then enjoy time with me. Three months was just long enough to keep her from getting too restless. It was short enough to keep us from getting too lonely. We knew we had years and years to spend together. What was 3 months here and there? When she was home we sparred, hiked, traveled, danced, laughed, and loved. Things were wonderful for many years.

  Then, one time, she didn’t come home. For a few months, I wondered if she had grown tired with our arrangement. When Justin showed up from one of his adventures with a letter, I knew something was wrong. Shea took an arrow to the lung and died of infection. She wrote a letter to me before she died. Someone in the army kept it until it could be handed off to Justin.

  That was Shea. Always laughing, always ready for a fight. My favorite memories though are of her dancing.”

  “Thank you,” said Lucy. “For telling us about them.”

  Taran nodded in her direction. His eyes were filled with tears and he rode ahead of the group a little. Everyone let him be.

  Chapter 28

  Taran spent a few hours lost in his own sad memories and thoughts. Everyone left him alone. No one knew what to say. No one knew how to make him feel better.

  “Don’t worry,” Justin told them quietly. “He’ll snap out of it in a day or two. It’s not like him to wallow.” To try to lighten the mood for everyone else, he switched topics. “At some point in time, you will probably visit the Elves,” Justin said to Lucy later that evening.

  “I certainly hope so. Are you making conversation or do you have a lesson in mind?” asked Lucy with a smile.

  “A fun lesson, if you don’t mind. You should probably learn Elvish.”

  Lucy groaned. Languages were not her forte. She was afraid of butchering a most likely beautiful language.

  “Oh, I think Elvish is beautiful,” gushed Maya, confirming Lucy’s suspicions though not lessening her fears. “It was one of the easier ones to learn. At least the basics were. Some of the past participles can get confusing.”

  Lucy wasn’t sure if she felt reassured or not.

  “Don’t worry,” laughed Justin, seeing the look on Lucy’s face. “I thought we would start with something simple and fun. That way you can get a feel for the language and the basics before I start you on vocabulary lists and grammar lessons. I’m going to teach you nursery rhymes.”

  “Nursery rhymes?” asked Lucy laughing. “Why not?”

  So, Justin spent parts of the next few days teaching Lucy and Maya nursery rhymes. Taran snapped out of his sadness to correct Justin when he was messing up. Lucy wasn’t sure if Justin was really messing up or doing it on purpose to distract Taran. After all, they were brothers. Taran was bound to correct him.

  Maya enjoyed it immensely and had a beautiful voice. Lucy had fun too, though her voice was not as pretty. She liked the way the Elven syllables flowed off her tongue. Justin taught her a song in Elvish and then told her the translation. Like most songs in foreign languages, it lost something in translation. Part of the beauty of the song relied not so much on the meaning of the words, but on the way they sounded. Words were chosen specifically for that sound combination. For instance, the song was about the south wind blowing. In English, to get the right sounds and alliteration, it would be about the west wind whistling. Lucy did her best with these lessons and laughed a lot. She had no idea when knowing Elven nursery rhymes would come in handy, but every bit of knowledge has the potential to help.

  Taran had a deep, clear singing voice that complimented Maya’s. Whenever Lucy needed a break, Taran worked on teaching Maya an Elven ballad. It was too complicated for Lucy, but Maya learned the verses quickly. Lucy didn’t understand most of it, but loved to listen to them sing. It was beautiful. She thought it was about an Elven maiden who fell in love with Death. She wasn’t sure if that meant metaphorically, or if there is a being known as Death. She meant to ask Justin for a full translation, but she was too busy enjoying the song when Taran and Maya sang. When they were no longer singing, her thoughts were on other things.

  Taran and Lucy were laughing and stumbling through a round of “Grow little seed” when Justin interrupted them.

  “I hate to stop you, but we have a problem behind us.”

  “Soldiers?” asked Gavin, loosening his sword.

  “Worse.”

  “Skelt?” wondered Maya confused. They were way too far south for that.

  “Erdette,” said Justin seriously.

  Everyone groaned. Erdettes were vile creatures that fed off magic and were difficult to kill. Their last encounter with an erdette had ended in their favor, but had not been enjoyable even by Gavin’s standards.

  “I wondered when we’d run into one,” commented Taran.

  “Comforting,” returned Justin.

  “Traveling with you and Lucy? I’d be a fool to expect anything less. You guys radiate enough magical power to attract them in droves. Wait, please tell me there’s only one.”

  “There’s only one,” Justin confirmed even though he glared at Taran. He was well aware of the amount of power they emitted. He saw no need to worry Lucy or make her afraid to travel.

  “Does anyone mind if I try something?” asked Lucy.

  “What are you going to try?” wondered Justin. “You can’t use
magic against it. Remember? It will only feed off that magic and get stronger.”

  “I remember. I still want the rest of you ready to fight, but I’d like to try something first.”

  Everyone agreed that there was certainly no harm in trying. Justin guessed the erdette would probably catch up with them in the next hour. They started to look for a reasonably defendable spot to fight from. Soon, they reached a clearing and decided it was probably their best option. They climbed off their horses and Maya tethered them to an oak tree behind them. They fanned out, ready to fight, and waited. Gavin stretched his shoulders. Taran spun his staff a few times.

  They heard the erdette before they saw it. Lucy could hear it sniffling, snuffling, and rustling branches as it moved through the woods. Lucy wondered if it was excited to catch up with its prey or worried that they were waiting for it. Then, a grey colored, vaguely human shape appeared. This one was smaller than the last one they had fought, slightly emaciated, but had the same long clawed hands, misshapen, elongated head with eyes pushed to the sides, and long, pointed, carnivorous teeth. It made an anxious sounding noise in the back of its throat and took a step towards them. It took a moment to survey the group and pick out the biggest threats and the biggest meal, magically speaking.

  Lucy didn’t want to give it time to attack. As soon as the erdette stepped out of the clearing, she went to work. You weren’t supposed to use magic against an erdette, but what if she used magic to change an erdette. She was able to stop the pull from the anderi, she should be powerful enough to do this. If it didn’t work, Gavin could thank her later for a challenge. Lucy took a deep breath and focused on the erdette.

  Lucy used her magic to quickly analyze the erdette and sense every part of it. Then, she went to work. She used her magic to send its feet deep, deep into the ground. The erdette smiled and began to eat the magic being used against it. It was the erdette’s first meal in months. It was able to draw some of the magic Lucy used, but it was so intent on feeding, it didn’t seem to notice that Lucy’s magic was still affecting it. As the erdette’s feet went deeper into the ground, Lucy spread out the toes, divided them, and directed them towards a water source.